Many of us wish it would go away, but salt and sodium continue to be hot buttons among most food industry authorities. This past month, food processors took a sigh of relief upon learning that a new congressional spending bill would modify the requirements for school lunches that the U.S. Department of Agriculture set earlier this year. The bill also requires further study on USDA’s long-term sodium-reduction guidelines for school lunches.
Both the House and the Senate are expected to vote on the bill soon. If passed, this means that center-of-plate protein processors can slow down their efforts to (drastically) lower the sodium content of products intended for the National School Lunch Program, as sodium reductions are not going to be as extreme as many feared they would be for the very near future.